Sometimes Ideas Only Die With Their Generation - "The Geranium" by Flannery O'Connor
Stephen Alexander Beach and M. Beach
(1388 Words)
Just a disclaimer/reminder that many of Flannery O'Connor's stories deal with racism and I am obviously not supporting that but writing about her story as it is.
Flannery O’Connor’s first published short story, “The Geranium,” is a story of contrasts; one in which an old man has to grapple with changes in his final days. Written roughly 80 years after the Civil War, the story illustrates the situation of a southern old-timer who still thinks of blacks as inferiors, though loving the ones he knew, such as Rabie, his fishing and hunting mate, and hating the ones of New York, who wore suits, lived in the same housing as whites, and expected to be treated as equals.
It was only in a weak moment that the widower Dudley agreed to move from his boarding house in the south to live with his daughter’s family in New York City. He had a bit of a hankering to see what the big city was like. This was his opportunity. Later he regretted this sudden wish for adventure, and for giving in to his daughter’s sense of duty that he should die among family, and not in a boarding house.
Used to sitting by a window in rural surroundings where he could view a lazy river trickling along the red mud and rocks under the trees, he now found himself utterly overcome by the multi-storied blackened brick apartment buildings on top of one another, where he spent his first week staring out the window six floors up and into another window, where a pale, sickly geranium was placed on the outside window sill every morning and taken in at 5:30 pm. In his mind he mocked the people for their pale sickly geranium with the cheap paper bow, and just knew that his old boardinghouse maid Lutisha could nearly effortlessly stick it in the ground and grow it into a beautiful flower.
His psyche was in shock the very first week in his new surroundings, as he took in the crowded tall darkened apartment buildings on top of each other, with hallways that went on forever like dog runs. The trip accompanying his daughter shopping in the city was hair-raising for her as she tried to help him through the crowds of the subway and off the floor on the top of the “El.” When she says he could have killed himself, he replied he didn’t care one way or the other.
But back safely in her apartment he grew restless. He shared a room with his sixteen year old grandson who never talked to him; and his son-in- law was on the road during the work week. And even though his daughter tried to talk to him, it never amounted to anything, and yet he felt on display because every room flowed into every other.
In his second week he became aware of a black man nicely dressed in his Sunday suit, clicking the heels of his tan shoes as he walked down the hall and entered the apartment next door. So Old Dudley asked his daughter why the servant next door was so fancily dressed. He was hoping that the man might be persuaded to help him find a place to hunt or fish, as he used to with Rabie. She shocked him when she said that the man was not a servant but probably the new tenant. She then told her father to stay away from him, not to get involved because she didn’t want any trouble. He, in turn, was furious that his daughter even thought he would want to associate with the man on equal terms. He felt humiliated that the daughter he had raised was willing to live in such a place with blacks. She said that was all they could do given their circumstances and left the room in a justified huff.
As he returned to his chair near the window he realized that the geranium still had not been put out on the window sill. This had not happened before. As he was pondering this he continued to experience a lump in his throat, which was getting worse each day he had been up north. In an effort to change the mood his daughter came in and asked if he would go down stairs three floors and pick up a shirt pattern from a friend so she could sew a shirt.
He reluctantly agreed, got confused, went down too far, then came up with the pattern but while climbing the stairs as he was reminiscing about the old hunting days, ended up falling backwards down three stairs only to be picked up by the fancily dressed man. To his horror the man insisted on holding him up and walking him to his door, all the time keeping up a conversation about hunting deer and guns and showing just a hint of humor as he caught Dudley pretending to shoot birds. Dudley could not even bring himself to look up, keeping his eyes on the man’s grey socks with the black flecks in them.
Safely back in his chair and thoroughly humiliated by the man having the nerve to hold him up and talk to him as an equal, he could barely breathe. His throat now seemed to explode into his eyes. He was crying. As he looked at the window across, still with no geranium, he saw the man who lived there in his undershirt and scolded him for not putting out the geranium. The man was angry and aggressive and with malicious delight told Old Dudley that the geranium had fallen to the ground. Dudley chided the man for not taking better care and the man said if Dudley cared about it so much he could go down there and get it himself. Dudley thought about this for a little, but then only grew more morose when he pictured what had already happened on those stairs. And knew he could not do it. The geranium lay at the bottom of the alley with its roots in the air. Dudley was that geranium, weak and pale, his roots broken and his life ending in an atmosphere that could no longer sustain his life.
Some Personal Thoughts
Flannery O’Connor’s first published short story, “The Geranium,” is a story of contrasts; one in which an old man has to grapple with changes in his final days. Written roughly 80 years after the Civil War, the story illustrates the situation of a southern old-timer who still thinks of blacks as inferiors, though loving the ones he knew, such as Rabie, his fishing and hunting mate, and hating the ones of New York, who wore suits, lived in the same housing as whites, and expected to be treated as equals.
It was only in a weak moment that the widower Dudley agreed to move from his boarding house in the south to live with his daughter’s family in New York City. He had a bit of a hankering to see what the big city was like. This was his opportunity. Later he regretted this sudden wish for adventure, and for giving in to his daughter’s sense of duty that he should die among family, and not in a boarding house.
Used to sitting by a window in rural surroundings where he could view a lazy river trickling along the red mud and rocks under the trees, he now found himself utterly overcome by the multi-storied blackened brick apartment buildings on top of one another, where he spent his first week staring out the window six floors up and into another window, where a pale, sickly geranium was placed on the outside window sill every morning and taken in at 5:30 pm. In his mind he mocked the people for their pale sickly geranium with the cheap paper bow, and just knew that his old boardinghouse maid Lutisha could nearly effortlessly stick it in the ground and grow it into a beautiful flower.
His psyche was in shock the very first week in his new surroundings, as he took in the crowded tall darkened apartment buildings on top of each other, with hallways that went on forever like dog runs. The trip accompanying his daughter shopping in the city was hair-raising for her as she tried to help him through the crowds of the subway and off the floor on the top of the “El.” When she says he could have killed himself, he replied he didn’t care one way or the other.
But back safely in her apartment he grew restless. He shared a room with his sixteen year old grandson who never talked to him; and his son-in- law was on the road during the work week. And even though his daughter tried to talk to him, it never amounted to anything, and yet he felt on display because every room flowed into every other.
In his second week he became aware of a black man nicely dressed in his Sunday suit, clicking the heels of his tan shoes as he walked down the hall and entered the apartment next door. So Old Dudley asked his daughter why the servant next door was so fancily dressed. He was hoping that the man might be persuaded to help him find a place to hunt or fish, as he used to with Rabie. She shocked him when she said that the man was not a servant but probably the new tenant. She then told her father to stay away from him, not to get involved because she didn’t want any trouble. He, in turn, was furious that his daughter even thought he would want to associate with the man on equal terms. He felt humiliated that the daughter he had raised was willing to live in such a place with blacks. She said that was all they could do given their circumstances and left the room in a justified huff.
As he returned to his chair near the window he realized that the geranium still had not been put out on the window sill. This had not happened before. As he was pondering this he continued to experience a lump in his throat, which was getting worse each day he had been up north. In an effort to change the mood his daughter came in and asked if he would go down stairs three floors and pick up a shirt pattern from a friend so she could sew a shirt.
He reluctantly agreed, got confused, went down too far, then came up with the pattern but while climbing the stairs as he was reminiscing about the old hunting days, ended up falling backwards down three stairs only to be picked up by the fancily dressed man. To his horror the man insisted on holding him up and walking him to his door, all the time keeping up a conversation about hunting deer and guns and showing just a hint of humor as he caught Dudley pretending to shoot birds. Dudley could not even bring himself to look up, keeping his eyes on the man’s grey socks with the black flecks in them.
Safely back in his chair and thoroughly humiliated by the man having the nerve to hold him up and talk to him as an equal, he could barely breathe. His throat now seemed to explode into his eyes. He was crying. As he looked at the window across, still with no geranium, he saw the man who lived there in his undershirt and scolded him for not putting out the geranium. The man was angry and aggressive and with malicious delight told Old Dudley that the geranium had fallen to the ground. Dudley chided the man for not taking better care and the man said if Dudley cared about it so much he could go down there and get it himself. Dudley thought about this for a little, but then only grew more morose when he pictured what had already happened on those stairs. And knew he could not do it. The geranium lay at the bottom of the alley with its roots in the air. Dudley was that geranium, weak and pale, his roots broken and his life ending in an atmosphere that could no longer sustain his life.
Some Personal Thoughts
For a bit I struggled to find some type of moral or deeper meaning to this story until it hit me ... what O'Connor is getting at, I believe, is fundamentally that ideas which characterize a generation do not always, or if ever, evolve through a change of mind of that present generation, but rather ideas change as the next generation is born without those prejudices and as the previous generation dies out.
The reason for this is, in my opinion, is that one's beliefs are not parts of life that are changed with little effort. Beliefs, like a geranium, have roots which run deep down into the recesses of our being. They tie into our fundamental worldview and interpretation of reality itself. And so for someone to change their beliefs regarding fundamental issues, like the nature of man, requires a level of uprooting which is unsettling and uncomfortable, as being without the limiting walls of one's old beliefs leaves one vulnerable to a chaos and complexity which could overwhelm the person.
This being the case, even as society comes to recognize that certain generational ideas are wrong and need to change, that change is not something most people are willing to go through if it has shaped their worldview. And so, often it requires the death of a generation and the birth of a new generation whose view of things is not tainted in its formation.
Fundamentally I think that this explains the meaning of the story. Dudley is an old man who has been engrained in southern racism and a view of black people as slaves. And so to live in the north with his daughter and to encounter black people who were going about their lives as free people was shocking to him. He could not bring himself to change his views, even though his daughter did, even though the man on the stairs helped save his life.
In so many words, old ideas sometimes only die with their generation ...
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1 - O'Connor, Flannery. The Geranium.
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